First Comes Love (2 page)

Sometimes she even asked herself if she'd make that trade—one of the endless variations of the pointless and cruel what-if game.
What if Daniel hadn't gone out to get that burger? What if she had insisted that she scramble him eggs instead? What if she had stalled him just long enough to tie the plaid olive-green scarf dangling around his neck, one side longer than the other? What if she had simply gone to him, kissed his unshaven cheek, said something, anything, more than
all righty
?

She knows the answers. She knows that's all it would have taken for Daniel to miss the Denali sliding on a patch of ice at the intersection of Moores Mill and Northside, less than two miles from home. And that she would never have laid eyes on that soft-spoken, gray-haired officer who appeared in their doorway some thirty minutes later, his patrol lights casting eerie red and blue flashes across the front lawn. She wouldn't have called Rob, frantically hitting redial, redial, redial until he finally answered from the airport in Memphis. She wouldn't have had to say those words aloud to him, or to awaken Meredith moments later, repeating the news for the second time. She wouldn't have tried in vain to track down Josie, before she drove to Grady Hospital with one of her three children, selfishly praying for a case of mistaken identity, hoping that it was
anyone
but Daniel. She wouldn't have the horrifying memory of watching her now ex-husband, when he arrived later that night, clinging to their dead son, sobbing his name, again and again and again.

Instead, in an alternate universe, the one they all futilely imagined, Daniel would be happily married to Sophie, the father of two or three children. He would be practicing medicine somewhere, likely right here in Atlanta, making a real difference, saving lives. He would be turning forty at the end of this year, an older, wiser version of the young man he had been. The kind of person who understands that nothing is as important as family. That love comes first.

They tried to remind themselves of this—of what Daniel stood for and what he would have wanted for them. Sometimes they even made choices in his memory or imagined him watching from above. But that was just something they did, and it never really eased their pain. Instead, nearly fifteen years later, he would remain gone, and they were still right there where they'd always been. Still reeling, regretting, wondering
what if
.

I
t is the first day of school, a symbolic and hopeful fresh start, at least that's what I tell myself as I stand before my captive, well-scrubbed audience of ten boys and eleven girls in my J.Crew finest—gold ballet flats, gray pants, and a pink, sequined sweater set. Sitting cross-legged on the braided rug, some children beam back at me, while others wear blank expressions, waiting without judging. It is the beauty of first graders. They are guileless, not a jaded one among them.

Odds are good that they'd heard that they'd scored in the great, mysterious teacher lottery before they even walked through my classroom door, adorned with a construction-paper maple tree, cutouts of twenty-one personalized bluebirds, and a banner swinging from the boughs that exclaims:
WELCOME TO MISS JOSIE'S NEST!

After fourteen years teaching at the same elementary school, I have a reputation as fun, energetic, and creative. I am not considered strict, but not a pushover, either. Incidentally, I am also known as the “pretty teacher,” which some parents (fathers and mothers alike) seem to value as much as anything else, including straight-up intelligence, a sentiment that has always confounded and vaguely annoyed me. I mean, I know I'm not teaching quantum calculus, but I
am
instilling critical survival skills in children, teaching them how to add and subtract, tell time, count money, and most important, really
read,
unlocking the mystery of consonant combinations and abstract sounds, blended and pronounced as words, strung together in sentences, filling the pages of books, whether with or without pictures. It might seem like
Groundhog Day
to some, including a few of my colleagues who really need to change professions, but I am passionate about what I do, thrilled to watch things click for a new crop of children every year.

Yet amid the anticipation is always a melancholy feeling that the summer is over, coupled with a familiar prickling of self-doubt and anxiety that has marked all my first days of school, both as a teacher and as a student before that. I consider the many potential obstacles ahead, wondering how many of my kids will have ADHD or dyslexia or other garden-variety learning issues. Who will become frustrated or disheartened when they fall behind their peers? Which children will have impossible-to-please parents who will bombard me with emails and calls, make outlandish suggestions for our curriculum, or point out grammatical errors in my newsletters under the guise of constructive criticism? (No matter how many times I proofread my correspondence, it is inevitable that at some point during the year I will misspell a word or misplace an apostrophe, mistakes that somehow seem more egregious from a teacher than, say, a lawyer or doctor.)

Then there is the disturbing matter of Edie Carlisle, the firstborn of my most significant ex, Will Carlisle. Will and I broke up years ago—eight to be exact—but I'm not yet over him, at least not completely. And I simply can't believe that his little girl has been assigned to
my
class, a fact I try in vain to forget as I launch into my script, a variation of what I say every year.

Hello, boys and girls! My name is Miss Josie! I grew up right here in Atlanta and graduated from the University of Georgia. Go Dawgs! I love animals and have a rescue dog named Revis. I have one sister and a beautiful four-year-old niece named Harper. My favorite color is pink, like my sweater. My hobbies include swimming, reading, baking cookies, dancing, and playing board games. I'm good at keeping secrets and being a trustworthy friend. I hope you will all be good friends to one another this year. I'm so excited to get to know each and every one of you and I feel very lucky to be your teacher!

It sounded pretty good, the exuberant delivery elevating it to a solid A, even though I could hear the annotated version in my head, which went something like this:

Every time I say “Miss Josie” I think it sounds like a stripper—a job I fleetingly considered taking one summer in college because strippers make a hell of a lot more money than waitresses. And teachers, for that matter. I have a dog, and a sister named Meredith. She drives me nuts, and I would mostly avoid her altogether if it weren't for my niece, Harper. I used to have an older brother, but he died in a car accident a long time ago, something I don't like to talk about, especially to my students. I think the subject of one's favorite color is supremely boring because it really doesn't tell you much of anything (color for what—a car or a purse or your bedroom walls?), but for some inexplicable reason, you all seem hyperfocused on it, so I'm going to say pink because roughly half of you will be pleased with my choice and at least a third of you will marvel over the coincidence of sharing the same favorite hue. Swimming isn't really a hobby, just a thing I sometimes do at the Y in an attempt to keep off the weight that I'm prone to gaining around my midsection (from all the cookies I bake, then eat), something you seem not to notice or at least not to judge. I do enjoy board games, but I'd rather play drinking games with my friends—or go dancing with them (did I mention I could have been a stripper fifteen pounds ago?). I can keep secrets, especially my own, which is a good thing, because if your parents knew some of my skeletons, they might send around a petition to have me fired. Friendship means everything to me because I'm thirty-seven and can't find a decent man to marry, which is depressing both because I don't want to be alone and because I adore children more than anything else in the world. I know I'm running out of time, at least to birth my own. Please be nice to one another this year because the one thing I will not tolerate on my watch is mean girl (or boy) escapades—though fortunately those dynamics don't really kick in until next year, yet another reason to teach the first grade. I'm so excited to get to know each and every one of you, and that includes you, Edie Carlisle. Did your father tell you that he dumped me right before he married your mother and had you? I will do my best not to hold this against you, but please show a little mercy and keep your happy-home anecdotes to a minimum.

I smile down at their eager, shining faces and say, “So? Do you have any questions for me?”

Four hands shoot into the air, and as I consider who is the least likely to ask the one query I have come to loathe, a fidgety boy with messy hair and ruddy cheeks blurts it out:
Do you have a husband?

Three seconds flat. A new record.
Congrats, Wesley,
I think, glancing at his laminated name tag which I made over the weekend, and making a mental note to work into the curriculum that a bare left ring finger means
please do not ask questions on the topic of marriage.
Perhaps I could squeeze it in between our weather unit and the introduction to the metric system.

I force a bigger, brighter smile, doing my best to ignore the knot in my chest. “No, Wesley. I'm not married. Maybe one day! And let's try to remember to raise our hands before we call out. Like this,” I say, raising my hand for a visual demonstration. “Okay?”

Wesley's head bobs up and down while I reassure myself that surely Edie knows nothing about my relationship with her father. After all, any knowledge of his romantic past would indicate inappropriate mothering—and I'm sure that Andrea (pronounced on-DRAY-ah) Carlisle has immaculate judgment to go along with her impeccable taste, which I've gleaned from stalking her Pinterest page.
Gluten-free snacks! Homemade Halloween costumes! Postpregnancy workouts you can do with your child! Paint colors for a serene master suite!
Thank God the woman's Instagram and Facebook profiles are set to private—a small blessing from the social media gods.

As if on cue, Edie raises her hand as high as it will go, elbow straight, fingers erect and skyward. She is holding her breath, her little chest puffed out, her bright blue eyes wide and unblinking. I look right past her, though she is seated front and center, and field a question from the back of the rug about my favorite food (pizza, unfortunately) and then my second favorite color (yawn).

“Hmmm. Maybe blue. Or green. Or orange. Orange is good,” I stall while doing a quick scan of Edie's features, searching for a resemblance to Will. She has his olive complexion and his mouth, her lower lip significantly fuller than the upper one, but the rest of her features belong to her mother, who often appears in the pages of
The Atlantan,
either cozied up to Will or expertly posing, hand at her waist, elbow jutting out, with one of her couture-clad gal pals. I've only seen her in person once, about four years ago, as she strolled down the cereal aisle of Whole Foods, pushing her precious Lilly Pulitzer–clad toddler in her well-organized, produce-rich cart. (Even back then, I knew from the usual two degrees of Buckhead separation that her child's name was Edie, short for Eden, Andrea's maiden name.) Wearing black Lululemon workout gear and flip-flops, Andrea looked effortlessly chic. Her skin glowed from a recent workout or facial (perhaps both); her limbs were long and toned; her thick, wavy blond ponytail was threaded through a Telluride baseball cap. I covertly trailed her for three aisles, torturing myself with her self-possessed air, graceful gait, and the deliberate way she checked labels while murmuring nurturing commentary to her daughter. I hated myself for being so mesmerized with her every move, and felt something approaching shame when I plucked her truffle oil of choice from the shelf, as if that single overpriced ingredient might bring me one step closer to the life she had, the one I so coveted.

Not much has changed since that day, other than the addition of Edie's little brother, Owen (with whom Andrea was actually five weeks pregnant at the time, I later calculated). I catch myself staring now at Edie, who is propping her raised hand up with the other, demonstrating that she has as much staying power as her mother. Reminding myself that it isn't Edie's fault that her father left me, or that I never learned what to do with that damn truffle oil and really had no business shopping at Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck, in the first place, I force myself to acknowledge her. “Yes? Edie?”

“Um,” she says, her expression blank, her eyes darting around the room as her hand falls limply to her lap. “Umm…I forgot what I was going to say.”

“That's okay. Take your time,” I say, smiling, a portrait of patience.

Her face lights up as it comes to her. “Oh, yeah! Um, do you have a boyfriend?” Edie asks, throwing salt on my wounds.

I stare back at her for a paranoid beat, then make the sick split-second decision to lie.

“Yes! Yes, I
do
have a boyfriend,” I announce, lifting my chin a few inches, clasping my hands together. “And he's amazing. Just amazing.”

“What's his name?” Edie fires back.

“Jack,” I say; it has been my favorite boy name since I first watched
Titanic
. I am also a sucker for all things Kennedy, choosing to focus on the Camelot version of JFK rather than the sordid Marilyn Monroe side.

“What's his last name?” Edie presses.

“Prince. Jack Prince,” I say, then add a wistful footnote. “Unfortunately, Jack doesn't live in Atlanta.”

“Where does he live?” asks a girl named Fiona, whose brutally short bangs do not take into account her cowlick. An oversize bow perches atop her head, seeming to mock the unfortunate back-to-school cut.

“Africa,” I say. “Kenya to be exact. He's a doctor in the Peace Corps. Working at a refugee camp.”

The lie feels therapeutic, as does my silent afterthought:
Take that, Edie. Your daddy's in wealth management, a euphemism for playing golf with his blue-blood friends while occasionally shuffling around family money they never earned.

“Has Jack ever seen a lion?” asks a miniature boy named Frederick with a soft voice but perfect diction. I feel instantly protective of wee Freddie, projecting that he will become a favorite. (No matter what they tell you, all teachers have pets.)